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Sunday, 6 December 2015

MAHATMA GANDHI : A GUIDE TO HEALTH

Mahatma Gandhi writes in the Introduction to A GUIDE TO HEALTH [1921]: "For more than twenty
years past I have been paying special attention to the question of Health. I have arrived at certain definite conclusions
from that experience, and I now set them down for the benefit of my readers. As the familiar saying goes, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’It is far easier and safer to prevent illness by
the observance of the laws of health than to set about curing the illness which
has been brought on by our own ignorance and indulgence.

Hence it is the duty of all thoughtful men to
understand aright the laws of health, and the object of the following pages is
to give an account of these laws. We shall also consider the best methods of
cure for some of the most common diseases.

Illness is the result not only of our actions but also of our
thoughts. As has been said by a
famous doctor, more people die for fear of diseases like small-pox, cholera and
plague than out of those diseases themselves.

Our ignorance of the most elementary laws of health leads us to
adopt wrong remedies or drives us into the hands of quacks. There is nothing so
closely connected with us as our body, but there is also nothing perhaps of
which our ignorance is so profound, or our indifference so complete.

At present, we know not how to deal with the most ordinary scalds and
wounds; we are helpless if a thorn runs into our foot; we are beside ourselves
with fright and dismay if we are bitten by an ordinary snake! The following pages are intended for such as are willing to
learn.

We have got into the habit of calling in a doctor for the most
trivial diseases. Where there is no regular doctor available, we take the
advice of mere quacks. We labour under the fatal delusion
that no disease can be cured without medicine. This has been responsible for
more mischief to mankind than any other evil.

Illness or disease is only Nature’s warning that filth has
accumulated in some portion or other of the body. It would be wise to allow Nature to remove the filth, instead of covering it up
by the help of medicines. Those who take medicines are really rendering
the task of Nature doubly difficult.

It is quite easy for us to help Nature in her
task by remembering certain elementary principles,—by fasting so
that the filth may not accumulate all the more, and by vigorous exercise in the
open air, so that some of the filth may escape in the form of perspiration. And
it is necessary is to keep our minds under
control.

We find from experience that, when once a bottle of medicine gets
itself introduced into a home, it never thinks of going out, but only goes on
drawing other bottles in its train. We come across numberless human beings who
are afflicted by some disease or other all through their lives in spite of
their pathetic devotion to medicines.

They are to-day under the treatment of this doctor, to-morrow of
that. They spend all their life in a futile search after a doctor who will cure
them for good. As Justice Stephen said, it is really astonishing that drugs of which so little is known should be
applied by doctors to bodies of which they know still less!

Some of the greatest doctors of the West themselves have now come
to hold this view. Sir Astley Cooper, for instance, admits that the ‘science’
of medicine is mostly mere guess-work; Dr. Baker and Dr. Frank hold that more
people die of medicines than of diseases; and Dr. Masongood even goes to the
extent of saying that more men have fallen victims to medicine than to war,
famine and pestilence combined!"

Mahatma Gandhi concludes by saying that perfect health can be attained only by living in obedience to the laws of God, and defying the power of Satan. Truth is the source and foundation of all things that are good and great. Hence, a fearless and unflinching pursuit of the ideal of Truth and Righteousness is the key-note of true health as of all else.